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Sonny and Me is told from the perspective of a smart kid called Billy, although he is almost universally referred to by his family name, Daughter, and his friend Sonny, who is not the sharpest tool in the box. The two are 4th years at a high school in Stirling, Scotland, and are prone to misadventures, which include stumbling into a (potential) murder mystery that they hope to solve.

This is a hugely enjoyable read. The banter is hilarious and clever. The friendship between the two boys is touching. The cast is pretty diverse, with characters who are gay or bi, a disabled dad, and an Asian love interest. Sonny himself obviously has something going on intellectually.

There was one point (the arrival of missives from Sair Throat) where I thought I'd maybe skipped a page accidentally. Suddenly the plot veered in a new direction, and although I expected that there would be a flashback to fill in the gap, that never happened. That was a little jarring, but otherwise the plot unfolds well.

I liked that not everything works out in the end. Daughter's favourite teacher doesn't get to come back to the school. He doesn't get the girl. But the plot comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I hope Sayers writes more about these two bampots and their adventures. In the meantime I have one of his later novels to read, somewhere down the line. And I'm looking forward to that immensely.

I've actually met the author in Portsmouth, the city in which the book is set, and bought the book for that reason. I was disappointed. They say "show, don't tell," but there's an awful lot of telling goes on — long passages where the heroine informs us of things she's done, but we don't live them with her.

The narrative starts with a female police officer (female, of Indian extraction, lesbian, anger issues) finding her fiancee murdered. I would have expected, over the course of the book, to have learned a lot about the murdered fiancee, and to have relived moments the couple had had together. But none of that happens. This lack of psychological reality was a major hindrance to my enjoyment.

Nevertheless, there's a lot of creativity here. The plot (involving interdimensional ports and conspiracies) has a great deal of promise. I enjoyed the settings in Portsmouth, which is a town I know well. I'm not interested enough to continue with the other books in the series, though.